bed step

My wife had been wanting one of these ever since she bought a new pillow top mattress that added a couple of inches to the height of our bed. It was a simple one day build that is really only notable because of the lumber itself.

On my last trip to the lumberyard I was lucky enough to find a beautiful piece of cherry that was almost 15 inches wide. The only problem was that it wasn’t flat or straight (significant cupping and a mild twist). Since I didn’t want to plane away half the board to flatten it, I ripped the board into three separate pieces along the grain using a thin kerf blade, jointed it, then re-paneled it. As you can see, by removing as little material as possible between the sections and being careful to re-align the grain, it is almost impossible to see where the joints are.

It may not be as nice as having a single, flat, 15” wide board, but for me it’s better than turning half your lumber into shavings just to maintain the width. Additionally, with the amount of cupping this board had, I think that had I just flattened it, the remaining board would have been less than 1/2” inch thick rather than the 3/4” I ended up with.

I have a rather large cat who is getting quite a bit older and hesitates to jump off the bed anymore, and it just makes me so sad to hear her “thumphf” everytime when she comes down… I gotta make her one of those!!